The Book of the Dun Cow (8 page)

Immediately the Mouse was there. He fastened his tiny teeth in Toad's face and would not let go. A flurry rippled through the other Hens. A few animals were drawn closer by the screaming.

Toad forgot the Hen. Hop by broken hop, dragging the vicious Mouse with him, he struggled closer to the Terebinth Oak. He cried a new tune:

“Son of my sitting!” he burbled pitifully. “Save me! They're murdering me!”

Not to save the Toad, but for other reasons of his own, Cockatrice opened his mouth and roared like thunder above the noise: “CHILDREN!”

It may have been that, encouraged by the Mouse's fight, some of the gathering animals were considering a fight of their own. Perhaps one creature's spirit could give spirit to the others, and a true revolt might begin. A Black Bear was up on his hind legs, waving his arms with menace. A Wolf was tensing his muscles for a deadly spring. But none of that matters much.

For as soon as Cockatrice roared his order over the land, the river began to boil—hectic churning. Then out of the water, by the thousands, the Basilisks poured. They slimed their way across the land with incredible speed. They shot like arrows among the animals, bit them with poison in their bite, and killed the poor astonished creatures where they stood.

Frantically the Hens exploded away from the Terebinth Oak, and some few survived; but the rest were no match, and they died.

The Mouse was killed at the very trunk of the Oak, for he had not taken his teeth out of Toad's face, and he had not run. But so was Toad killed. Before the Basilisks there was no distinction one from the other.

Then the thousands of Basilisks spread outward from the Oak into all the land, killing and killing every living body they came upon. No animal was prepared to meet such an enemy. None was able to return the fight. Like a black fire the Basilisks ate the land dead until not a soul was left in it, except Cockatrice sitting silently in his tree. The Hog lay down with a single bite in his neck. The Bear with a bite between his toes was cast upon the ground, his eyes still open. The Wolf had gone so far as to snap one serpent up; but that serpent had bitten the Wolf on his tongue and then had slithered unharmed out of a dead Wolf's mouth.

No longer was Cockatrice's gaze faraway. This, now, was his business. From the top of the Terebinth Oak he watched the slaughter with attention and with cheer. “Children,” he breathed over and over to himself. “Ah, my children.”

And from below the ground, from within the prison of the earth, there spoke another, greater voice:
“Circumspice, Domine
,” Wyrm rumbled powerfully, almost peacefully.
“Videat Deus caedem meum
.”

“Let God in his heaven witness all my murder,” spoken in the language of the powers.

When that land—once under the rule of Senex, the Rooster with his Back to the Mountains—had become a sepulcher and a wilderness with the dead lying everywhere, then the Basilisks withdrew again into the river. Then Cockatrice himself—in his own good time—left the place. He took to his mighty wings and flew west, for so the river flows.

And then it began to rain on earth.

The wasted land, the shattered society, the bodies dead and festering, were all great Wyrm's triumph. In one small part of the earth his Keepers had been first weakened and then killed. Their lives, which locked his life beneath them in the earth; their banded peace, which chained him there; their goodly love, which was his torment; their righteousness, which was iron against his will—that fabric had in one place on the earth been torn.

So one part of the earth's crust was softened, and Wyrm rejoiced. Could he but spread that soft, vulnerable area across a continent and to the sea, then he could himself blast through the crust, break free, and gallop through the spheres of the universe. Oh, he would swallow the moon in a gulp. He would bloody the sun. And he would roar almighty challenges to the Lord God Himself. He would spew chaos among the stars; and he would whirl his tail with such power that when it hit the earth, that planet would be cracked from its fixed position at the center of things to spin like nonsense going nowhere. While Cockatrice flew westward above, Wyrm dreamed dreams below: He himself would make of his earth prison a puny mockery.
He
would make it little among the planets and nothing among the suns.
He
would snatch purpose from its being, giving it a loose, erratic, meaningless course to travel.
He
would surround it with cold, empty space. And
he
would cancel heaven from above it.

Oh, how Wyrm hated this round ball, the earth! How he yearned to be out of it forever, to see it a piece of dust, whimpering from the edge of a galaxy for its God!

Therefore, when the Lord God saw that the land just west of the mountains had fallen to Wyrm's deceit, God himself cloaked the entire earth in cloud. He shut it up. Sadly, he closed it from the rest of creation, and he left it to other Keepers to keep Wyrm imprisoned.

That was when the rains began.

So, although he could not know it, it was a very lonely rain which fell on Chauntecleer the day he sat alone upon his mud heap in an empty field. And the clouds that covered his first meeting with the Beautiful Pertelote—they were God's doing. And the war which he was about to fight—it was of tremendous significance.

One thing the Lord God did do for his Keepers, that they be not altogether alone in the struggle to come: He sent his messenger to them. The Dun Cow, her eyes so full of compassion, appeared in Chauntecleer's land to speak a word or two.

Yet, despite these convulsions above and below him, Chauntecleer the Rooster pottered through his life in regular Rooster fashion, enjoying his marriage and looking toward the spring. He could do that simply because he was ignorant of matters greater than his Coop. Perhaps that was good. Perhaps not. In either case, that's the way that it was.

Because something fell out of the sky daily, even into the spring, the winter snow left with a weird speed that year. It had heaped itself so monumentally across Chauntecleer's land that the Coop had finally been sitting in a deep, white scallop. But then, between a night and a day, snowfall turned to drizzle and mist. The mist froze at a touch upon the snow, which, for a night and a day, had the smooth, shining, and eerie shapes of ice on top of it. Another night and another day, and the ice was etched and gouged by channels of racing water, and the Coop withstood a perilous splashing. Then thunderstorms broke the weather: growling first in the east, striding by wide thunder steps toward the Coop, then suddenly cracking asunder the sky and the earth with wild, stuttering lightning. And that was it for the snow. But the water yet flowed everywhere.

Southeastern winds met the west winds over Chauntecleer's land, and the storms produced were lasting and savage.

The Rooster would hear an electric
zzzz
, like a sigh from the points of twigs and old grass; his feathers would rise a fraction on their own; then—
CRACK!
Blue, dazzling light; a ripping of elements; and the frightful thunder went slamming into everything that stood upright. The storm strode on brilliant, quivering spiders' legs all around his Coop; and the rain drove at the earth as if it were intent on digging craters. The Hens huddled, and the Rooster crowed his canonical crows with particular care and assurance; for his soul knew well where the sun was, though the sun was hidden and never showed itself: Chauntecleer's crowing had
become
both sunlight and certitude for his animals; it made for them the day they never saw. It pointed placement for all their scattered and shredded feelings. And it brought them through in good order.

Because, finally, the storms strode westward and away—and a gentle spring was given her time in spite of the sky's confusion.

Spring: The moist air smelled of loam and the earth. It smelled like flowers even before the flowers had begun to bloom. Chauntecleer had preserved hope in his animals during the storms; so when the storms left, the animals quickly forgot them. And when the new spring air filled up with sweetness and promises, so very quickly the hearts of the Hens were stirred. They clucked, gossiped, joked, giggled, and grinned; they swept the floor with feathered brooms, scrubbed the roosts, poked at cobwebs, dusted with down, and threw every window wide open. Spring! The air puffed through the open Coop and gently tugged at the feathers on their backs. And that was a good feeling. The busy waters outside chuggled and laughed gladly. And that was a good sound. Seven young Mice and three young Chicks tumbled joyfully through the Coop, squealing and falling over each other; and thirty-one Hens didn't mind their games at all.

That was a good time.

Lord Russel, the Fox of Good Sense, had taken to visiting the Coop often these days; and then who fussed at him or shooed him away? Nobody. They welcomed the blatherer, even listened to his many stories of clever escapes—and listened so well, with so many appreciative clucks, that he decided to reveal unto them several marvelous tricks known only to himself and to his grandfather, long since dead. And while he explained the finer intricacies of his tricks, the three young Chicks—named Ten Pin, Five Pin, and One Pin—sat down in wonder and gaped.

“Children, to be sure, of their father,” the Fox would say. “The spitting—not to say
spitting
—images of the old crow,
er
, Cock. But it is rather more evident, more to the point,
most
evident, that they possess, each one of them, the uncommon acumen, the, shall we say, uncommon Good Sense of their uncle.
Ahem!
Shrewd uncle”—by which he was, of course, referring to himself. For he had decided that any Chick who took such an interest in his arcane tricks should be nephew to him. And here there were, Glory be!, three such Chicks! Therefore he would be without discrimination an uncle to all three of them. The Fox took Pins One, Five, and Ten under his wing, so to speak, and came to the Coop exceedingly often.

It was a very good time!

Even Mundo Cani Dog looked around the Coop from where he lay in front of the door and found it possible to grin a cavernous and toothy grin. Once somebody heard him laugh. But then a debate developed on whether the Dog had really laughed after all. Neither side triumphed in the debate, for nobody heard him laugh again. But there sat that smile on his continent of a face, and that was good for something.

John Wesley Weasel sat himself down at Ebenezer Rat's old exit at the back of the Coop and did an astonishing thing: Moved by the spring, he was striking up a relationship with the Wee Widow Mouse. “Sparking,” he called it. “Sparking the Widow.”

“Mice cleans in the spring,” he said through the hole, while the Widow hunched and puttered over her cleaning. “I see. That I see. John Double-u understands. Mice and Double-u's is different, there's a fact. Look different—on account of Mice is squeaky homebodies. Double-u's is beings of the whole outdoors. Nothing to a Double-u to spend a whole night outside a-huntin'. Bring home food for the family, you understand. For the family, you understand.” He looked significantly into the Widow's home to see if she understood, to see whether she had taken the true depth of his meaning. “Look different. Double-u's got finer fur and sleekier backs and twistier turnings. Run at a clip and fight like the devil. Double-u's takes care of their own. Is well able to take care of their own. Of their own, you understand.” He looked significantly at the Widow. He was sparking, you understand. “So Mice cleans in the spring. Well, now. There's a marvel. There's a habit I could learn to”—here John Wesley had a small coughing fit—“like.”

And the Ants came marching seven by seven, carrying enormous quantities of food to their hole, where the larder had grown bare: Corn kernels and dead beetles thirteen times their size they carried.
“HUP, WHO, HREE, HOR
!” Tick-tock marched at the head of the column, crying commands. “
WHA ARE WE FOR
?” And a chorus of rumbling bass voices sang in return: “
BUSY-NESS AND WORK
,
SIR
!
NEVER WILL WE SHIRK
,
SIR
!”

“Morning, morning, cousin Chauntecleer,” Tick-tock said as they passed by the Rooster. “A fine and likely morning you have crowed in. Propitious for a little bit of doing.”

Chauntecleer didn't answer. But Tick-tock had only spoken out of the corner of his mouth, too busy to notice the look in the Rooster's face, and he marched on.

It was a very good time, the springtime.

But as it progressed, and as the waters giggled running away, Chauntecleer the Rooster acted more and more strangely. Sometimes he was with his animals, laughing louder, strutting prouder and grinning broader than any of them. At such times he knew what the spring was about and, in spite of the lasting rain, he enjoyed its promises with all of his heart. But at other times a strained, worried look came into his eyes; and then, no matter what good thing was going on around him, he grew silent and went inside of himself. Then he didn't answer his animals' questions, and he didn't notice when they were telling jokes. Then he ate very little. And he began to take trips by himself. He would disappear from the Coop without a word for hours at a time, returning heavy with mud and heavy with worry. When the trips lasted throughout an afternoon, and then when they began to stretch out into a full day, the animals heard terce, sext, and none crowed in a tiny triple Peep.

“The Pins,” they would say; and they would nod to one another.

Chauntecleer had two separate feelings going on inside of him that spring. They were like two worms in his soul, and they were fighting with each other, first one winning and then the other. One worm was good, nearly a butterfly. This was the feeling which he got from the Beautiful Pertelote, from the three Pins, his children, and from the joyful, springtime Coop.

No one had ever heard him crow lauds as he crowed lauds these early mornings! Oh, he reared back his head, threw out his chest, flustled his feathers as if they were a shimmering army, and let fly with a full cannonade of a crow: “COCK-A-WING-DING-DOOOOO! GOD BLESS THE WORLD AND
YOU!
” Then he was proud, was dizzy with pride. For he stood on the haunch of a mountainous Dog, and there beside him stood three young Chicks—their yellow heads back, their yellow chests out, their yellow, downy feathers making an awful effort to bristle.

“PEEP!” they cried, and Chauntecleer fell down off the Dog and rolled laughing on the ground.

Three Chicks thought that this was wonderful; so they pipped-pipped-PEEPED all over again. And their father laughed until his stomach hurt and he got the hiccups.

“Congratulations, twits,” he roared. “God put trumpets in your throats! Why, you will blast the morning from her mooring and shatter the east! Peep? Ah-ha-ha-ha!” And he kicked at the air in his joy.

Pins One, Five, and Ten jumped onto his chest, and he knocked them away like cotton balls. Then he gathered them together under his wing and said, “Ye are lions, roaring lions, and sons to me.”

The Beautiful Pertelote saw these things from the doorway and was glad.

But then she saw what no one else was seeing. She saw the look of worry tug at Chauntecleer's eyes—until he grew silent, and set his Pins up in a straight, proud row, and went off on another private trip.

The other feeling in his soul during this springtime was an eating, unsatisfied worm. It chewed at him and made him restless. It wouldn't let him sleep at night, or else it invited dreams not good. It made him to be what he had never thought he would be again: lonely. He forgot that he could talk to Pertelote, and she didn't remind him; for in her love she let him be.

Chauntecleer's trips were to the river. It was the river which was confusing and troubling him. And more than that, it was what he thought he saw there which made him so private in his anxiety.

The river had never stopped its swelling. During the previous winter it had, certainly, frozen; but even the ice had not locked it in its place. Rather, it had continued to swell until it burst through that coat of iron ice, like a living, serpentine monster splitting open its shell, and great chunks of ice went spinning away in the current. The ice would form again; the river would swell again, more than before; and again the ice would break above the strain. All winter this had gone on, the river growing and growing; and Chauntecleer had gone to watch its growth and to worry. He worried because he did not understand it. He no longer recognized his borderland river.

And he worried profoundly because he had begun to see visions.

For example, when he looked at the ice chunks in the river, they became heads even while he was looking—heads bobbing up and down in the water. At first they were no more than heads, with their mouths and their eyes closed, mute, expressionless. And they were all of them white. They looked to him like the heads of lions, or of cows; they were wolves and bears and lambs and bulls, calves and kids. Once Chauntecleer thought that this was a trick of his eyes, and he might have let it pass. But as he had gone back again and again through the winter, the ice had always poured by as severed heads. And when their eyes opened up and began to look back at him, then he knew that it was no trick, but a vision he was having, and he waited to learn something from the vision. He continued to return. Yet the heads taught him nothing. They looked at him with deep sorrow in their eyes. Presently the mouths, too, opened up; and the Rooster heard the sounds of grief in his vision. Bawling and bleating, sobbing and keening, the heads flowed by him in the river; but never a word did they speak. Chauntecleer returned troubled.

And now the spring had come. The heads had melted away, and the Rooster's vision was over. But the worm in his soul was not gone; for still the river had not stopped its swelling.

The river was a flood—as it had never been before. And, boiling far beyond its banks, the flood picked up every floating thing on either side of it, rushing each thing away in its current. The good river had become a destruction, silently swallowing Chauntecleer's land foot by foot. It scoured the earth away from the roots of the trees. It pressed against these trees until they collapsed; and then it rushed them away as well. It swallowed nearby hills, creeping ever closer to the Coop. Miles are miles; miles are a long way to go, and so it was not yet anywhere near the Coop. But there came a day, during this spring, when Chauntecleer left the three Pins behind him in a proud, straight row and went to look at the river's flood. On this day his worry slipped very close to panic, because when he looked he could not see the other side. Water covered all the land to the south as far as he could see; and what is more, the water was not still. It sucked and snuffled at the edges of the earth with its boiling current.

And that night poor Chauntecleer had a dream.